Searching for a lost landmark in Williamsburg

Of all the public buildings that helped define life in 18th-century Williamsburg, the most conspicuous absence in today's restored colonial capital may be the Market House that once stood near the Powder Magazine on Duke of Gloucester Street.

That's why Colonial Williamsburg archaeologists have been investigating the Market Square site so closely for the past few weeks, probing for signs of the 1757 structure that was an important center of the town's daily life until it was replaced in the mid-1830s.

"Of all the places in town, the Market House would have been where the greatest variety of people gathered," CW architectural historian Carl Lounsbury says, describing the motives behind the dig and a reconstruction effort that is being funded by a $1 million gift from foundation trustee Forrest Mars.

"This was where the town and the country met, where tradesmen and itinerant higglers sold their wares, where slaves and workmen mixed with masters in a market filled with open stalls and carts and wagons. So we'd really like to be able to show that part of the town's life."

Three other digs have explored the site in the past, including a 1934 excavation conducted as the 19th- and 20th-century church that covered its footprint was being razed during the early years of the Williamsburg restoration.

But not long after archaeologists recorded and mapped what appeared to be evidence of the market house's foundation, most of the few surviving deposits of brick rubble and oyster-shell mortar were dug out and removed as part of the church's demolition.

That's left CW archaeologist Andy Edwards and his crew with the difficult job of going back and trying to extract as much information as they can from such ephemeral clues as the footprint of an 18th-century drain and slight shifts in the color of the dirt left by the workmen's shovels.

"We're looking for any remnants we can find. We've even found the claw marks of the excavator from 1934 in the bottom of a trench," he says.

"But so little survived that now it's all about reading the dirt, about searching for little nuances and trying to figure out what they mean."

Colonial Williamsburg has considered reconstructing the missing landmark at least two times in the past, beginning with an early 1930s proposal by W.A.R. Goodwin, the Bruton Parish Church rector whose pioneering preservation efforts led to the 18th-century capital's restoration.

"The Market Square area is one of the largest areas to be included in the restoration plan," he wrote.

"(It) should be reproduced as authentically as possible and…a Market House should also be erected."

Two decades later, the notion was revived again when the foundation's architecture office decided that there was enough historical evidence to justify a reconstruction based on similar buildings from the period.

But the project did not progress any further, Lounsbury says.

With the recent gift, however, the architectural historian and his colleagues are turning to numerous similar period structures in a search for additional clues, including a rare surviving early 1800s market house in Fredericksburg.

"It's still there after all these years," Lounsbury says, "and there are still hooks hanging from the arches."

Combined with the partial footprint uncovered in 1934, these analogous examples from Norfolk, Portsmouth, Richmond, Fredericksburg, Alexandria and Annapolis have combined to give the foundation's architectural history department several ideas about the possible construction and appearance of the Williamsburg Market House, which is believed to have been erected by a carpenter.

A preliminary sketch shows an open building with a shallow hip roof, a raised brick floor and wide overhanging eaves.

Measuring approximately 20 by 40 feet in size, the original structure may also have been surrounded by a ring of short vertical posts or bollards marking the areas where the market could be conducted.

"They would have been pretty big posts," Edwards says.

"So we're hoping we can find the traces of at least one and use that to help with the reconstruction.

The Market House dig will continue through Friday, weather permitting, after which Edwards will meet with architectural historians to discuss the project's finds and the potential merits of continuing for another couple of weeks.

In addition to the Market House site, the archaeologists are simultaneously investigating the footprint of a smaller nearby building that also shows up on the Frenchman's Map of 1782 Williamsburg.

"We don't know what it is," Edwards says.

"But while we're digging here we're checking it out."

Find more stories about Hampton Roads History at dailypress.com/history and Facebook.com/hrhistory.

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